DIGITAL movie magic

Creating award-winning effects outside of Hollywood is a bold idea. Schneider installed a ready-made data centre in less than five months for Animal Logic and now they make DIGITAL movie magic with Schneider EcoStruxure™ IT.

Animal Logic, the animation and visual effects studio behind films such as The LEGO Movie, The Matrix, and The Great Gatsby, is benefiting from high-performance computing, all from our quickly deployed, prefabricated data centre.

The Challenge

• Animal Logic faced the challenge of success: Increasing IT demands forced a strategic shift in the studio's data centre model.
• Considering the high data usage of digital animation for film, the studio was in need of a solution that mitigated latency issues.
• Within four and a half months, the company needed a scalable, high-density build that would meet its current and future compute demands.

• A prefabricated, modular data centre was deployed within the urgent time frame, and built to Animal Logic's specifications.
• Integrated power, cooling, and monitoring were all optimised for high-performance computing and business needs.
• A full turnkey solution (from software to physical space) was provided with service support throughout planning, designing, and building.
• Data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software was deployed to provide complete visibility across the facility, improving planning and operational performance.
• EcoStruxure Asset Advisor, a cloud-based monitoring service, offers Animal Logic maximum protection of critical equipment. It features 24/7 remote monitoring, troubleshooting, and data-driven insights that provide visibility and live metrics – right to employees' smartphones.

The Results

• Animal Logic experienced a massive boost in animation productivity, the direct result of deploying a render farm with an average operation speed of 1.25 petaflops for most common workloads, all within a 30 kW per rack power density.
• The on-premise system is more reliable than the prior one, removing creative "bottlenecks" and reducing latency.
• With our services supporting the present and future of Animal Logic's data centre, the studio is operating in peak condition – and continuing to light up the big screen.

Customised and realised

"We selected Schneider's prefabricated system based on their reputation. The nature of our business called for a predictable infrastructure: An extremely high-capacity, highly dense solution."